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You Really Got Me cemented the Kinks as pioneers of the British Invasion. Along with Dave Davies’ infectious guitar riff, the in-your-face solo – which, for decades, was wrongly attributed to a pre-Led Zeppelin Jimmy Page – was in fact written and played by Davies, thanks to a particularly fiery studio session.
“I know you know the mythology of who played the solo on You Really Got Me,” Billy Corgan says in conversation with Davies on his Magnificent Others podcast.
“Of course I did,” the Kinks guitarist replies. “If anybody could play like that, they must be crazy.”
Corgan presses on, asking Davies about the state of the session when it came to tracking the solo: “But isn't there a story where, during the recording, Ray looks at you, goes, 'Oh, come on…’”
“Yeah, he did. And he was pissing me off!” Davies replies.
The You Really Got Me session – or sessions – were indeed contentious. The band recorded the song at least twice in mid-1964, with the demo’s “bluesy” quality replaced by a take that was slower than what was eventually released as the final punchy version.
Davies has reiterated on multiple occasions that the guitar’s distorted tone was the result of how frustrated he felt at the time. In fact, he was so frustrated that he ended up slicing the speaker cone of his Elpico amp with a razor blade and poking it with a pin.
“My brother is lying,” Davies wrote in a Facebook post from 2014, debunking his brother Ray’s claims that he should be given credit for the guitar tone.
“I don't know why he does this, but it was my Elpico amp that I bought, and out of frustration I cut the speaker cone up with a razor blade, and I was so shocked and surprised and excited that it worked that I demonstrated the sound to Ray and [Kinks bassist] Pete [Quaife]…
He continued, “Ray liked the sound, and he had written a riff on the piano which formed the basis of the song You Really Got Me and I played the riff on my guitar with MY new sound. I ALONE CREATED THIS SOUND.”
The frustration didn’t end with the session or the guitar tone, however, as rumors continued to swirl for decades that it was Page – then a session guitarist – rather than Davies who played the iconic solo, even though Page himself debunked the claim throughout his career.
“He did very little as far as I remember,” recalled Kinks drummer and percussionist Mick Avory when asked about Page’s contributions in a 2023 interview with All Music.
“But [the solo] was definitely Dave Davies, because even without knowing, you know it's Dave rather than Jimmy Page. It just wasn't in him to play like that. It was just completely off the top of his head – that solo. It fit – the attitude of it.”
Beef aside, when the song hit the airwaves in August 1964, it proved to be the breakthrough hit the band needed. It clinched the Number 1 spot in the UK and Number 7 in the US, becoming one of the Kinks’ most enduring hits along the way.
“We had no idea we would have that kind of effect on people,” Davies told Guitar World last year.
“We were just glad to make a record and get something out there. I came up with the sound, but I wasn’t trying to create something new. Although once we finished the track, I think we looked at each other like, ‘Maybe we’re on to something here…’
Elsewhere in last year’s exclusive interview with Davies, the British Invasion icon talked about the Kinks’ four-year ban from America and how it impacted the rest of their career.
